Gov. Scott Walker reads to students during a 2011 visit to Stevens Point to promote his Read to Lead initiative. The Read to Lead Development Council has been left vacant, a state audit found.

I am not a natural cynic about politics, but this is one of those weeks when the smart bet seems to be to take however cynical you normally are about politics, double it, check to see if you are cynical enough yet and repeat as needed.

There is the destructive and unnecessary federal government shutdown, sure, which is getting plenty of ink and pixels and consuming plenty of airtime among the type of people whose job is to go on television to explain why their political side is amazing and the other side is a nightmare. Everybody knows the government shutdown is terrible and I agree, too, that it's terrible.

But that is Washington. Washington is terrible. I have in mind an outrage that is closer to home and decidedly lower profile. For me, the scoop by Dee J. Hall of the Wisconsin State Journal that Gov. Scott Walker's administration has not staffed or funded its Read to Lead initiative was one of the more depressing stories of recent weeks.

Why depressing? Well, for one thing, Read to Lead was one of a small handful of genuinely bipartisan policies in Wisconsin, and an initiative that I used as an example of how, if you look beyond the headlines and the big, contentious issues, there really were policies that politicians could agree on that were helping improve the state.

Wausau educators helped shape the task force's recommendations, which included screening for kindergartners, new reading standards for third-graders, recommendations to help schools involve parents in teaching reading and support programs for low-income families. It also created a Read to Lead Development Council in the governor's office.

It was all part of what I called in a column I wrote about this in January 2012 a "revolution" in how reading is taught. The governor signed the bill into law in April of that year.

And since then, according to Hall's reporting on a Legislative Audit Bureau report, the state has spent $0 of the $400,000 allotted for the program and has appointed zero members to the Development Council.

This was a bipartisan initiative that had genuine buy-in from teachers, that was supported by science and designed to help kids learn. In an op-ed column Walker submitted to Daily Herald Media in February 2012, the governor touted the initiative as a key accomplishment. "We want to be certain that every child is reading early so they don't ever feel that learning isn't for them," Walker wrote then.

"The Read to Lead project is an ongoing initiative," Walker spokesman Tom Evenson wrote me this week. "The board is expected to begin meeting and making recommendations for dispersing funds this fall."

If so, it will be only 18 months or so after the law was passed.

Here's the most charitable, non-cynical way of looking at this: The council that hasn't met is not the entirety of the program. Evenson addressed parts of the program that are happening, and they are not trivial things.

"Reading assessments are now in place," Evenson said. "The Department of Public Instruction is currently piloting and evaluating educator effectiveness, which is set to go in place in 2014-15 as required and DPI is implementing the teacher preparedness recommendations. The results should be posted for parents to see in the 2013-14 school year."

There is more, including professional development resources and a new literacy requirement for YoungStar, the state's daycare rating system, designed to boost early literacy.

That is all good. But that empty council still bothers me. I don't like thinking that something like the Read to Lead Development Council was just a tool for a politician to get a little positive press rather than a substantive push to help kids. I don't like thinking it and I'm still hoping that the cynical view will be proven wrong.

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Mentzer: Walker's vacant reading council is fuel for my cynical side (column)

I am not a natural cynic about politics, but this is one of those weeks when the smart bet seems to be to take however cynical you normally are about politics, double it, check to see if you are

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